"Each generation, coming out of obscurity, must define its mission and fulfill or betray it." Frantz Fanon - The Wretched of the Earth James and Grace Lee Boggs Center to Nurture Community Leadership. {r}evolution

Our mission is to nurture the transformational leadership capacities of individuals and organizations committed to creating productive, sustainable, ecologically responsible, and just communities. Through local, national and international networks of activists, artists and intellectuals we foster new ways of living, being and thinking to face the challenges of the 21st century.

Week four From Domination to Shared Community By Shea Howell

Thinking for ourselves

From Domination to Shared Community

Week four of the occupation

By Shea Howell

April 16, 2012

These are unprecedented times in Detroit. One man has the absolute power to make every decision about the public life of our city. The Emergency Manager has complete authority over every single aspect of civic responsibility. The Mayor and City Council serve at his pleasure. They have no independent decision making authority. Contracts with unions, pension funds, health care, the delivery of basic services, the priorities of the budget, the use of public money, and the disposal of public assets all rest on his authority alone. Long standing covenants designed to increase public awareness and foster accountability in elected officials are all set aside. There are no requirements for public hearings, no application of the Open Meetings Act, and no need to notify or justify decisions about the sale of public properties.

This elimination of local control over civic life has been justified by the financial crisis facing the city. Although many cities and towns across the nation face financial difficulties, only in Michigan are these difficulties tied to the removal of elected officials. There are currently 23 states that have the power to intervene in municipal finances. Only Michigan ties this intervention to the elimination of the power of elected officials.

Moreover, the scope of the current enabling legislation, Public Act 436, grants broad power to a single individual. This is intentional. The current legislation changed the title of the individual from Emergency Financial Manager to Emergency Manager.

This change is more than semantics. It was in direct response to the efforts by the Elected Detroit School board to challenge the decisions of then Emergency Financial Manager Robert Bobb over curriculum, methods of instruction, and texts in the schools. The court upheld the responsibility of the elected School Board, stressing the emphasis on financial management, and limiting the scope of Robert Bobb’s actions. Not for long of course. The right wing state legislature rushed to enact Public Act 4, which expanded the powers of individual overseers of school boards and municipalities, converting all Emergency Financial Managers to Emergency Managers.

This act, successfully overturned by a hard fought public referendum, was met with yet another effort by the legislature to strip local governments. Thus we are now functioning under Public Act 436, which grants to the single governor appointed Emergency Manager the power to act “for and in the place of” all municipal authority.

This is a completely new situation. As the most recent court challenge to this law says, “Public Act 436 establishes a new form of local government, previously unknown within the united States or the State of Michigan, where the people within local municipalities may be governed by an unelected official who establishes local law by decree.”

Over the last few years, these emergency manager efforts have been met with unprecedented resistance. Elected officials in managed communities have mounted legal challenges, organized public meetings, and attempted to meet their responsibilities outside of authorized channels. Petitions were circulated and defended. At every opportunity, the people have voted down this legislation. Now we are witnessing protests, public meetings, and renewed court challenges.

But there is a deeper calling for all of us at this moment. It is the calling toward creating beloved communities that Dr. King evoked nearly a half century ago. Today around the city, in quiet and often unknown places, people are questioning, sharing, praying, probing, acting, and struggling to create new ways to secure our safety and to heal one another, our communities and the earth. Many people recognize that simply restoring representative governments will not solve the many challenges we face.

Instead, people throughout the city are invoking the idea of beloved community. This has inspired generations of people around the world to struggle for justice, peace and healing. It is a vision we can all call upon as we seek to transform war zones to peace zones, hatred to love, domination to shared community.

ON Being Krista Tippet

ON Being Krista Tippet
January 19, 2012
We travel to Detroit to meet the civil rights legend Grace Lee Boggs. We find the 96-year-old philosopher surrounded by creative, joyful people and projects that defy more familiar images of decline. It's a kind of parallel urban universe with much to teach all of us about meeting the changes of our time.
Listen now

Boggs Center 3061 Field St. Detroit, MI 48214

James and Grace Lee boggs Center To Nurture community Leadership
hpp//www.boggscenter.org / {r}evolution - the two side non-violent revolution in values.
The Boggs Center was founded in 1995 by friends and associates of James Boggs (1919 -1993) and Grace Lee Boggs (1915 - ) to honor and continue their legacy as movement activists and theoreticians.
Our aim is to help grassroots activists develop themselves into visionary leaders and critical thinkers who can devise proactive strategies for rebuilding and respiriting our cities and rural communities from the ground up, demonstrate the power of ideas in changing ourselves, our reality, and demystify leadership.